Wednesday, August 11, 2010

3 weeks to Lean Horse

The highlight of last weeks running was my 6 hour night time run in The Basket Slough. This is my favorite local place to run. It is the scene of my embarrassing Virgin in the Dark night time running episode. I chose it for this run to force myself to use a headlamp for a long run, but I may also have chosen it to exorcise some “things that go bump in the night” demons. Sure enough, first pass through, all I see are glowing eyes everywhere I look, and I have this overwhelming sensation of being watched and it is seriously creepy. Second pass through, I force myself to stop and look into the trees and brush and confirm that yep, there are dozens of deer everywhere. Once I convinced myself they were deer, I learned to take some comfort in their presence, figuring that if they were there, nothing higher on the food chain was. The run was very successful, I ran through the transition from dusk to dark, and ran until 2:30 AM so I experienced running sleepy. Many people complain about motion sickness from running with a headlamp. I don’t ever get motion sickness from anything, so I didn’t expect any problems, but it’s nice to know that I can go that long with a headlamp with no issues. I had some uncomfortable chafing issues chronicled in a separate post if you’re morbidly curious. I added grilled chicken to my approved foods list, I meant to try chicken broth too, but forgot all about it. That 30 miles was my last “long” run before Lean Horse. I’ve got a few more 16 and 20 milers, but I get to start slowly decreasing my overall miles. The only downside is I’ve been eating like crazy, and have grown especially fond of chocolate milkshakes, at all times of day. I’ll need to start cranking the calories back as I taper the miles, which is too bad.

For the week. 64 miles with a long of 30. I’m feeling pretty good about where I am right now. I just need to take care of the little things, like lists and supplies and chafing recovery!